Thinking and Staring
by suzie the moderately red
Summary: The Doctor reflects for a moment on his companion, but the thought process of this particular Time Lord can be somewhat...erratic. .....I own nothing. The BBC owns it all.....


"Doctor? You're staring at me again."

Hmmm…what? Oh, yes, staring. Staring is bad. For some odd, or rather "ood" reason, she seemed to dislike being stared at. Most sentient beings were like that, he had discovered. Stare at them long enough and they get nervous. Or even angry. Except for that planet, the one where being stared at was an invitation to mate. _That _had been rather disastrous.

"Oi, Doctor? Didja hear me?"

Right. No more staring. Look at something else. His gaze slipped away from Rose and settled on a moderately large lump in the wall behind her. Wait a tic, that lump hadn't been there the last time he had stared at this particular wall (an act which seemed to happen with alarming frequency; he really ought to look into it, but, some other time)! Bloody hell, the Tardis must be at it again. Ever since Rose had come on board, the silly thing (the Tardis, not Rose, although she could be particularly foolish at times) had been remodeling itself. New rooms popped up out of nowhere. Doors that had most certainly _not _been there earlier suddenly appeared. And as for what it was doing to the old rooms, well, while he would admit that some of them maybe did need a little sprucing up, that was no call to completely redo them! New furniture, furnishings, wall coloring, everything! The only room that had been left untouched was the Doctor's own room, although he suspected that is was merely a matter of time until that too would be "fixed". And, as if that wasn't bad enough, all the redone rooms had a distinctly feminine feel to them. His…ah, what did the apes call these things again? Oh…"bachelor pad" was quickly being transformed into something utterly and completely _domestic_. Ugh. He most definitely did not do domestic. And, yet, here she was. Rose Tyler. Representing domesticity at its finest. That is, if it had a finest, which he sincerely doubted. But nonetheless, here she was. With him. Everywhere they went, every place, every time, beings just naturally assumed that they were "together", a couple. Ever since that first jaunt off to the year 5 billion, with the tree things and Cassandra and the Earth blowing up and all that. They had always denied it, quite vehemently in fact! But no one ever seemed to believe them. For that matter, hewasn't sure _he _believed it anymore. Didn't know what Rose though of the whole thing. He certainly wasn't going to ask her, and while he could get the Tardis to sneak inside her head and find out, she wasn't fond of that. Ranked right up there with staring, it did. Such a stubborn person! But she was _his_ stubborn person. Silly and stubborn and…

"Doctor!"

Her voice rang in his head. She sounded a little mad; had he done something wrong? Couldn't imagine what though. After all, he _had _stopped staring…at her that is. He was watching the wall and the lump now, which he really would have to do something about. Can't have the Tardis making random bits of lumpery and such. He hoped she wasn't going to slap him; he had been slapped before by her mother (900 years of time and space, only to be slapped by Jackie Tyler!) and it had _hurt_.

"Doctor, are you even listening to me?!?" Rose demanded.

"Erm, no. Not really." The Doctor confessed. "Sorry?"

She snorted, "Figures. Well now that I've got your attention, tell me this of great and mighty Time Lord: where are we?"

"Oh, somewhere. It's a surprise!" he said as he waggled his fingers at her.

Her eyebrows rose slightly as she pondered this. "You don't know, do you." It wasn't a question, but rather a statement.

"Not a clue" he admitted cheerfully, "Ready then?"

She sighed and took his outstretched hand' "Ready. Just try not to get us killed this time, yeah?"

"What?! Oh, come on!" he scoffed, "When have I ever almost gotten us killed?"

Rose laughed and began to count off on her fingers, "Oh let me count the ways! Satellite 5, New Earth, Cardiff, the Slitheen, the werewolf, Cardiff again, the Autons, the end of the world…"

"All right, all right, I get it!" he cried, and then frowned as if in intense thought. Suddenly, he looked up and a huge grin spread across his face, "But _none_ of that was my fault!" he proclaimed.

"What?!" Rose exclaimed, "How do you get off thinking that?".

"Well it isn't." He wagged his finger at her, "Not as if I asked the universe to try and kill us, now is it?"

"Erm, no, I guess not. But still…" she mumbled.

"No, no buts now!" the Doctor commanded, waving his hands about enthusiastically. "And besides, haven't I done plenty of good stuff too? Like Barcelona?"

"If you recall, we never actually made it to Barcelona, what with your regeneration and the Sycorax invasion." Rose reminded him.

"Oh, right, we were a little busy, weren't we." The Doctor thought for a moment, brow furrowed, and then glanced slyly over at his companion, "Still want to go?"

"Sure, I guess so…", she stuttered, frantically trying to remember what exactly he had said about the place.

He jumped up and began dashing about the console, randomly pulling levers and pushing buttons. "Then off we go! Rose an' the Doctor, off on another whirlwind adventure…"

Rose grinned and raised her voice to join his "…through _TIME AND SPACE_!!!".


End file.
